Just before his execution for his failed raid on Harper's Ferry, John Brown supposedly declared "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood",
Did anyone in the US pre-Civil War share his sentiments? Did anyone believe, from the American Revolution to the 1860s, that the issue of slavery would catapult the US into it's bloodiest war?
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Jewish prespective:
Abraham had servants/slaves and was even going to leave everything he had to one of them. And he had a lot. We see in movies about American slavery a somewhat different picture of slavery than what existed in the ancient Near East. There weren't plantations in Israel where 10-50 slaves worked, constantly being whipped and beaten, and killed if they ran away. No, most people didn't own any slaves and the ones that did, usually had just one and kept them for life. They were really probably like a member of the family. Think of them how some butlers are portrayed in movies. They work for the wealthy family and serve them but aren't mistreated and are even relied upon. Some slaves in the ancient Near East solely raised children. They were nannies/mannies. I can't remember the name but there was even a name for this particular kind of servant/slave. In Isaiah, Israel is called God's servant/slave. Is this a bad thing? My point being that, obviously, it can be very good to be a servant/slave if you have a good master like God. Or you could be unfortunate and be sold or give yourself over to a psychopath. In this case, according to the Torah, you were allowed to run away and people were even supposed to help you. They weren't supposed to bring you back to the psychopath like they did in the antebellum South. Most people actually sold themselves into slavery. They wanted to become slaves because it was the only way they could get a roof over their head and food to eat. There weren't social welfare programs like we have today. And begging wasn't going to work unless you were disabled. People would have seen you as a "sluggard" if you begged for money when you were capable of working for what you needed, even if that meant making yourself a servant/slave of someone else. And there's even rules regarding if you want to make yourself a slave for life. There is a difference between Hebrew servants and slaves from other nations. But there are rules regarding what to do if a Hebrew servant/slave actually wants to, after his 7 years of work, make himself the property of his owner for the rest of his life. Apparently, it might have been, maybe not ideal, but maybe not so bad being a slave. Today, slavery exists but it is very different. According to the Torah, if you kidnapped your own people, you were to be put to death. This would be the
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How differently were the slaves treated? What rights did they have in one era, and not in the other?
Were there monetary payments, or did they pay in other ways? If they did pay with actual money, how were they able to earn that?
So I get that WWII happened much more recently than the US civil war, but this disturbs me. I do a lot of internet reading on both topics, and my anecdotal impression is that holocaust denial is a bit of a fringe mindset, yet the notion that the civil war was fought for state's rights and that slavery wasn't THAT bad is very permeable even today.
My thought would be that as time passes, people would actually feel less connection to the past, so it's easier to say "slavery in the south was really bad". But in modern day Germany, I would imagine most citizens alive today have very personal connections to people involved in Nazi Germany. I would think this may breed apologists instead of what we currently see.
Maybe this question isn't right for AskHistorians, so please let me know if I should ask this elsewhere!
